People’s Daily recently reported that Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been making a lot of noise about using international arbitration to call for settling the conflicts with China in the East China Sea. Last year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also accused China of breaking its agreement with Japan on “joint development” of natural resources. The People’s Daily article countered that Japan is doing the wrong math on three fronts. The first is by supporting the Philippines, who went through international arbitration. Japan wishes to tie the East China Sea issue to the South China Sea issue. The second is the attempt to distract the Japanese voters from Japan’s failing economic policies in order to gain more seats in the July Japanese Senate election. The third is to snatch Chinese sovereignty in the East China Sea. However, in creating new trouble, Japan will not benefit from the international laws, or fool the Japanese voters, or earn a good relationship with neighbors.
Source: People’s Daily, March 19, 2016
http://opinion.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0319/c1003-28210788.html